


Tribute

by EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo Card 1 [12]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Armor Painting, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Clone Trooper Culture (Star Wars), Cody Thinks OBi-Wan Is Dead, Commander Cody Week, Episode: s04e15 Deception, M/M, Potential One-Sided Attraction, The Fact that Cody Couldn't Go to Obi-Wan's Funeral Makes Me Big Sad, crying themselves to sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 22:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30096006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12/pseuds/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12
Summary: Cody has never had something important enough to paint on his armor. Until now, when they're gone...Bad Things Happen Bingo: Crying Themselves to Sleep!Commander Cody Week Day 5: Armor Painting!
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo Card 1 [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2123604
Comments: 4
Kudos: 65





	Tribute

**Author's Note:**

> BINGOOOOOOOOO  
> So for my 15th BTHB, I have finally gotten my first bingo! :D  
> Don't worry, I'm not stopping! :) (Or perhaps you would like me to stop lmao) 
> 
> This is also for Codywan Week Day 5: Armor Painting. Happened to work out that way, which was quite exciting!
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy! Please R and R, let me know what you think :) 
> 
> Find me on tumblr at this name. Requests are open :)

The paint dried quickly—a benefit of the horrible sticky heat here. It sat thick, in the pattern of smooth, heavy strokes that he made sure were spread evenly across the armor. The paintbrush had lost so many bristles over the years that he was amazed it managed to hold together for this.

He wasn’t quite sure what he would have done if it hadn’t.

Painting his armor had always been a methodical task. A brief reprieve at the end of a long mission when he could sit in the command tent while the rest of the men were sleeping and take a few moments to accomplish something that was close to mindless as he could manage. The night was quiet—the mission they were on was nearly at its close and the men would start collapsing the camp to load the command ship the next day. And then it was off to somewhere else; some other planet he’d never see again in some corner of the galaxy he’d never heard of.

It hadn’t been such an unbearable thought when he wasn’t alone.

He looked over his helmet to the corner of the tent that had remained untouched. There was a standard issue blanket, bundled with its straps against the pillow at the head. Vacuum sealed sheets next to that, waiting to be spread on the thin mattress of the cot that was propped in the corner. The privacy shield, never unfolded, sat in the exact position it had been unloaded in.

The corner seemed as though it were still waiting on its occupant’s arrival. As if the tent flap might open at any moment and the General might walk in to take his rest in an exhausted heap. Or that he might sit in the other unoccupied chair across from Cody at the table and make conversations as he leaned back slightly, running a tired hand through his hair or over his face as he asked Cody his opinion on the mission they had just endured together.

It had become a ritual. Every other mission, or at the end of any particularly long one, when Cody would take the time to paint a new layer of yellow onto his armor. They had talked over everything and nothing and so little that Cody always longed to know more. Books and people and food and planets that they had been on together or that Obi-Wan thought he should see someday—when he could make the decisions on where he would like to go. They talked about the men, the new ones with bright yellow paint on their armor and the older ones with their own little touches colored in. Obi-Wan asked him sometimes why he hadn’t painted anything extra on his own armor, like Waxer had done with the little girl from Ryloth on his helmet or that Helix had done with the Republic Medical Corp logo because he said it made sense to have a dream for later.

The answer was not something Cody was forthcoming with. There was so little he had felt true connection with in his life beyond his brothers and his mission that for the longest time nothing had come to mind. And then, in a wash, he knew what he had wanted to paint there. With a shock of ginger hair and blue eyes and a broad smile that made Cody’s heart skip in his chest with the lightness of it.

He could hardly paint his General onto his helmet.

But now, looking at the empty chair and at the empty cot and feeling as though he were swallowing lungfuls of meaningless air into empty lungs, he wished he had. Wished he had told him, If only once, even if he hadn’t felt the same, even if there was no way they could be together. He wanted him to have known.

He finished the top of his visor and debated with himself. He couldn’t paint him now either. The wound was raw for the men. Some of them—the men in Ghost Company—suspected what his feelings might be for Obi-Wan. They didn’t mention it, of course, but he noticed they gave them space. Let Cody be alone with Obi-Wan whenever possible, almost as if they thought it were a shared feeling. That Obi-Wan had felt the same for him. But he couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t do that.

He sat the helmet down and looked forward. He could picture him there. Walking in, apologizing for being late. Not killed by a bounty hunter. Not cremated in some box on Coruscant. Here, with Cody, where he ought to be.

He raised a thumb to the side of his helmet and touched the clear white space there. The white coating was peeling with age, graying slightly. He wondered how long until his hair started to do the same; Obi-Wan’s hair on his temples had started doing that. Just recently. In the last few months.

He felt the first tear on his cheek before he realized he was crying. He hadn’t cried at all yet, hadn’t let himself do anything but continue the rote machinations for the mission and soothe the men until this final moment when he was finally alone. A moment that he hadn’t realized he had counted so much on sharing the past few years.

He closed his eyes against the vacant side of the tent, letting tears run down his face until they itched against his chin and he scratched at them, smearing the tiniest bit of yellow paint on his jaw. He could imagine Obi-Wan’s face at that, the sound of his laugh that he would try to hide behind his hand. It ached so badly he leaned back in the chair.

How long he sat there, he couldn’t say. Long enough for the last bit of light seeping in under the tent to disappear and the sound of gentle snores to start from the attached barracks tent. Long enough for the last bit of paint to dry.

When he opened his eyes again, they were still damp, and his helmet looked back at him. Before he could stop himself, he reached for the smaller brush, shaking up the bit of black paint. There, in the plain white circles, he painted a triangle, thin and isosceles with the point on the bottom. Out from it, just to the side, a pair of black lines.

It was Obi-Wan’s battle stance, the points his shoulders and his tunic, the bars his fingers. It was him, even if not so obvious to the others, which it never could be. He knew. And that was enough.

He packed his armor away after that, letting the helmet dry on the command table as he did. When it came time, he turned off the lights, moved to area in the connected tent to where his own cot lay in wait. After only a moment, he went back and got his helmet off the table, setting it on the stack of crates next to his bed, the little design turned towards him. The tears came again, blurring his vision as he looked at it, lying on his side. He waited for sleep, hoping for happy dreams, thoughts filled with their last mission when his helmet had still been bare and he hadn’t realized things had been so perfect.


End file.
